Karen Sioson Watercolors

"Saging-sagingan"

KS00084

10.5 x 13.5 inches

watercolor on paper

Gone green lately.  Have been a bit busy in the garden.  And congratulate me, only half the plants I have repotted keeled over.  That is quite an improvement from my 007 status in the plant world.  I also got bougainvilleas in multi-colors so you can probably guess what my next projects will be.  And yes, the bougainvilleas are expected to survive 100%, I was only allowed to watch when they were being replanted in the bigger pots.  :D

About the painting's title "Saging-sagingan", literally translated it means mock bananas or fake bananas.  It is the local name for the plant Heliconia psittacorum (also known as false bird-of-paradise, parrot's beak).  I noticed ever since being told the local name, I can't see the parrot's beak anymore but keep seeing bananas, bananas.  The leaves of the plant also look like banana leaves growing upright from the ground.

For this painting, again, I used a limited palette and used the whiteness of the paper to get lighter colors.  One advantage of using a limited color palette is it makes it easy to achieve cohesiveness in your paintings.  For example, to get a darker green I added a bit of violet to the sap green.  For other parts of the leaves, I added orange or red to the green to get different shades of green.  For the shadings in the "bananas", I used mixtures of green and blue.  The red got darker or lighter with the addition of violet and orange, etc. Even though the colors look distinctly blue, distinctly green, distinctly red or yellow, they have parts of the other colors in them that later when you take it all in together, you know the colors fit.

My palette for this painting:
(W&N)  permanent rose, Winsor yellow, Winsor orange, permanent sap green, Winsor green, cobalt blue, cerulean blue and Winsor violet.


Thank you for dropping in.